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Antiquity

Catherine Volpilhac-Auger

1Not only is classical antiquity familiar to Montesquieu, it offers him the very
matter of his reflection: between the modern world and the ancient, he detects
no discontinuity nor especially difference of status – whereas Voltaire looks
with suspicion on everything that has come down to us from the authors of
Antiquity. It is true that certain notions were unknown to the Ancients, such as
a monarchy endowed with a legislative body made up of representatives of its
citizens (EL, XI, 8) or the distribution of powers in a
monarchy (EL, XI, 9); but that only makes it easier to
observe them; it is even the sole guarantee of the pertinence of analyses which
must not be the product of a given space and time, but attain the highest level
of generality. In this capacity, the history of the Romans, without equal before
or afterwards, particularly merits study, whereas the Greek republics constitute
an excellent locus for study of republics, of which the Europe of Montesquieu’s
time offered few examples. Thus Montesquieu applies what he announced in the
Preface of L’Esprit des lois: “When I have been called
back to Antiquity, I have sought to adopt its mentality, so as not to consider
similar cases that are really different, and not to miss the differences of
those that appear similar.” (“Quand j’ai été rappelé à l’Antiquité, j’ai cherché
à en prendre l’esprit, pour ne pas regarder comme semblables des cas réellement
différents, et ne pas manquer les différences de ceux qui paraissent
semblables.”) One can see particularly in Book XXIX of L’Esprit des lois how Montesquieu plays on the resemblances and
divergences, by comparing the better to distinguish between them a law of
Syracuse and the System of Law, substitutions (a legal term for the replacement
of one inheritor of an estate for another) among the Romans and the same
practice in France, suicide at various times in Antiquity, the formalities of
justice, etc. (ch. 6, 8, 9, 10).

2The morality of the Ancients constitute material particularly worthy of interest,
and not their political systems alone; they offer a certain number of enigmas,
which the modern observer is content to reject as so many proofs of the
irrationality of ancient peoples, or not to try to explain. Montesquieu takes
pleasure in resolving such difficulties: thus the importance of music among the
Ancients (EL, IV, 8: “Explanation of a paradox of the
Ancients with respect to mores”), or the surprising punishment of an Areopagite
whose crime was killing a sparrow (EL, V, 19): “[…] this
was not the condemnation of a crime, but a moral judgment in a republic founded
on morality” (“[…] il ne s’agit point là d’une condamnation pour crime, mais
d’un jugement de mœurs dans une république fondée sur les mœurs”). Geography
enables surprising rapprochements, or rather contrasts, for the general spirit
can be quite different between neighboring peoples: “One would not have better
taken advantage of an Athenian by boring him than of a Lacedaemonian by
entertaining him” (“On n’aurait pas plus tiré parti d’un Athénien en l’ennuyant,
que d’un Lacédémonien en le divertissant ”, EL, XIX, 7).
The very foundation of L’Esprit des lois, or one of its
goals, is to explain that which at first appears inexplicable, contradictory or
paradoxical. Still one must start with the principle that the ancient Greeks or
Romans were no different from the Europeans of modern times, and that one can
apply to their institutions, however bizarre they may appear (thus ostracism,
EL, XXVI, 17), a principle of intelligibility. This
explains in particular his interest for Homer, who to him is not simply a great
poet: he introduces us into an irreducibly different world; thus it is as an
observer of customs wrongly judged to be strange or even aberrant that
Montesquieu takes notes on that author (Rotta); whence these two remarks typical
of the interest he takes in him:
– “It seems to me that Homer mentions silver much less frequently
than other metals; and it seems to me that gold was in more common use among
them. I scarcely find him at all mentioning silver.” (“Il me semble qu’Homère
parle beaucoup plus des autres métaux que de l’argent ; et il me semble que
l’or était chez eux plus en usage. Je ne vois guère qu’il parle de
l’argent”)
– “One can see that the Greeks, who had different mores and
different common law than we do and a different religion, did not have the same
notion of generosity as we do” (“On voit que les Grecs qui avaient d’autres
mœurs et d’autres droits des gens que nous et une autre religion n’avaient pas
la même idée de générosité que nous”, Bordeaux, BM, ms 2526/2, f. 5-6 ; OC, t. XVII, in press). Is it therefore the study of
mores (perhaps today we would say of “mentalities”) that gives him the key to
the Romans’ destiny? That is in any case what is said in a projected preface,
ultimately rejected, for the Considérations: “The history
of the Romans has been sought in their laws, their customs, their organization,
in private letters, their treaties with their neighbors, the mores of the
peoples with whom they dealt […] » (“On a cherché l’histoire des Romains dans
leurs lois, dans leurs coutumes, dans leur police, dans les lettres des
particuliers, dans leurs traités avec leurs voisins, dans les mœurs des peuples
avec qui ils ont eu affaire […]”, OC, t. II, p.
315-316).

3One aspect in particular drew his attention: the “crime against nature”,
mentioned on several occasions (EL, VII, 9 ; XII, 6) –
though homosexuality was a sensitive subject, sternly condemned in the 18th century; Montesquieu, who does not attempt to
excuse it in cities “where a blind vice ran rampant, and love took only one
form” (“où un vice aveugle régnait d’une manière effrénée, où l’amour n’avait
qu’une forme”, VII, 9), tries to understand it; he takes care each time to place
it in its historical, social, and political context, and invokes Plutarch to
explain, in a chapter in which he berates the “petty souls” (petites âmes) of women in monarchies, that they can take “no part” in
“true love” in Greece (ibid.). The will to understand
societies very distant chronologically or geographically from modern ones, and
to explain each by the other: this intention motivates the entire work of
Montesquieu.

4This implies no idealization on his part: to trust the Ancients is not to devote
religious admiration to them, or to be devoid of critical spirit. Quite the
contrary, Montesquieu never stops denouncing the treachery and the cruelty of
the Romans. To be sure, they can appear as veritable models: “I feel confident
in my maxims, when I have the Romans on my side” (“Je me trouve fort dans mes
maximes, lorsque j'ai pour moi les Romains”), Montesquieu remarks when he is
studying the juridical systems in various governments (EL, VI, 15). But if he admires them, it is in no case on a moral plane; he
is above all impressed by the admirable efficiency of the Romans, by their
manner of achieving their goal with a perfect economy of means and a sure
awareness of their interests. If one wants to know how a people can achieve its
ends, one must examine the Romans. Thus the passage from monarchy to republic,
which has been lauded as coming from his aspiration to freedom: “One of two
things was bound to happen: either that Rome would change its government, or
that it would remain a small and poor monarchy” (“Il devait arriver de deux
choses l’une : ou que Rome changerait son gouvernement, ou qu’elle
resterait une petite et pauvre monarchie”, Romans, I; OC, t. II, p. 91). Rome’s ambition being clearly
established from the start, everything gets going in a process that is
unstoppable. Similarly, if it is traditional, in ancient historiography, to
recognize the manner in which the Romans were able to adopt their enemies’
armament when it was superior to their own, it is specific to Montesquieu to see
a methodical plan in that capacity for adaptation. For them all means are good;
their fall would come from their failure to see their common interest, when the
armies, emperors, senators, and people would begin to pursue only their
individual interests – which is what happens when they turn into conquerors, or
rather when the conquest goes beyond Italy, or even the limits of their small
province: yet their vocation was precisely to be conquerors, since they were
constantly at war with their neighbors… That is why the Romans deserve to be
known: because from them derives a real knowledge of war and politics, and in
talking about the Romans, one can talk about completely contemporary problems
without the risk of censorship.

5But there are other features that attract Montesquieu, like the ancient art which
he had discovered in Italy (though the digs in Herculanum had not yet begun, and
he could not make the same observations as the president de Brosses a few years
later). These things are mentioned in his Voyages (OC, t. X), thanks to a great lover of antique sculpture,
the Cardinal de Polignac, whom he frequented in Rome in 1729, and De la manière gothique (OC, t.
VIII), in which Montesquieu raises questions about the reasons for which the
Greeks had achieved perfection in the field of sculpture. Ancient techniques,
like all that had been lost in the realm of works and thought, retain his
attention, for one might hope to reconstitute this forgotten mastery. In
Florence, the gallery of the Grand Duke (OC, t. X) now
provided him many objects for admiration and reflection.

6Are we speaking of literature or art? “I confess that one of the things that has
most charmed me in the Ancients’ works is that they capture the great and the
simple, whereas among our moderns it almost always happens that in seeking the
great, they lose the simple, or in seeking the simple, lose the great. It seems
to me that I see in some lovely, broad countrysides, with their simplicity, and
in others the gardens of a rich man, with groves and flowerbeds.” (“J’avoue
qu’une des choses qui m’a le plus charmé dans les ouvrages des anciens, c’est
qu’ils attrapent en même temps le grand et le simple, au lieu qu’il arrive
presque toujours que nos modernes, en cherchant le grand, perdent le simple, ou
en cherchant le simple, perdent le grand. Il me semble que je vois dans les uns
de belles et vastes campagnes avec leur simplicité, et dans les autres les
jardins d’un homme riche avec des bosquets et des parterres.”, Pensées, no. 117). This aptitude for the sublime comes from a
“naïveté” which in turn seems now beyond reach. The disappearance of paganism
finally entailed the impoverishment of poetry (Martin 2007): “We owe the
cheerful air which is everywhere in fable to the country life that men lived in
early times. We owe to it those happy descriptions, the naïve adventures, the
gracious divinities, the spectacle of a state so different from ours as to be
desired, and not so remote as to seem implausible; finally, the admixture of
passions and tranquility. Our imagination laughs at Diana, Pan, Apollo, the
Nymphs, the groves, prairies, and fountains. If the earliest men had lived as we
in our cities, the poets could not have described for us what we see every day
with disquiet, or feel with distaste.” (“Nous devons à la vie champêtre que
l’homme menait dans les premiers temps cet air riant répandu dans toute la
fable. Nous lui devons ces descriptions heureuses, ces aventures naïves, ces
divinités gracieuses, ce spectacle d’un état assez différent du nôtre pour le
désirer, et qui n’en est pas assez éloigné pour choquer la vraisemblance, enfin,
ce mélange de passions et de tranquillité. Notre imagination rit à Diane, à Pan,
à Apollon, aux Nymphes, aux bois, aux prés, aux fontaines. Si les premiers
hommes avaient vécu comme nous dans les villes, les poètes n’auraient pu nous
décrire que ce que nous voyons tous les jours avec inquiétude, ou que nous
sentons avec dégoût.”, Pensées, no. 108; a passage
repeated in Essai sur le goût ; see also Pensées, nos. 112, 114, 115). His reading of the poets
continues late into his life: it is only after the publication of L’Esprit des lois that he takes careful notes on Homer,
finds not only the material for a genuine history of mentalities, as we have
said, but also where, like Pope, he admires the diversity of characters (Martin
2005). He simultaneously admires Vergil and Fénelon, thus demonstrating that he
is far from pledging allegiance to the Ancients, and that in the Quarrel of the
Ancients and Moderns he takes care not to adopt a purely doctrinal position
(Martin 2005).

7Obviously one could study each aspect of the vast ancient literature which he
knew so well (see the article “Latin writers”). For poetry let us take just
Ovid, in whom he sees “nothing to eliminate”, for he does not possess “too much
wit”, as was often said of him at the time (Pensées, no.
2180); or yet Lucretius, whose invocation to Venus he quotes at the beginning of
Book XXIII of L’Esprit des lois, devoted to “population”
– as the Invocation to the Muses, this passage does not appear in the manuscript
prior to publication, and from all appearances was also added in the very last
phase of writing (1747), when Montesquieu was feeling the need to relieve his
reader and reinforce the “poetic” dimension of his work. History is obviously
his chosen domain, beginning with Florus, who was the basis of the Historia romana dictated to him when he was schoolboy
(OC, t. VIII), but especially frequently cites in the
Essai sur le goût for his taste for the well-struck
formula, to Tacitus, his guide as much for the early foundations of germanic
society (and therefore of the French monarchy, which had its roots in the
frankish nation) as for the denunciation of the law of lese-majesty under
Tiberius. Eighteenth-century philosophy is more Latin than Greek, and
Montesquieu is not about to grant too much to metaphysics; of Aristotle and
Plato he retains mostly their political dimension, prefering to reread the Latin
authors, Seneca – some – and Cicero – a great deal. The latter is assuredly the
author most admired by Montesquieu, for he was at once a man of action and a
philosopher, and what a philosopher! The one who does not let himself be
impressed by a philosophical “sect”, and packs them all off together (Notes sur Cicéron, unpublished, OC, t. XVII, in press, and Discours sur Cicéron, OC, t. IX), and was himself a Stoic, among the most
remarkable of them (Larrère). But he was also a statesman, and very simply a
man, with his weaknesses, like those of his time: “We can see in the letters of
a few great men of that time, which have been placed under the name of Cicero
because most of them are his, the discouragement and despair of the early
republicans at this abrupt revolution […]. And this is better seen in these
letters than in the historians’ versions: they are the masterpiece of naïveté of
people united by a common grief and an era when fake civility had not made the
lie omnipresent; finally, we do not see in them, as in most modern letters,
people who intend to deceive each other, but unhappy friends who strive to tell
each other everything.” (“On peut voir dans les lettres de quelques grands
hommes de ce temps-là, qu’on a mises sous le nom de Cicéron parce que la plupart
sont de lui, l’abattement et le désespoir des premiers hommes de la République à
cette révolution subite […]. Et cela se voit bien mieux dans ces lettres que
dans les discours des historiens : elles sont le chef-d’œuvre de la naïveté
de gens unis par une douleur commune et d’un siècle où la fausse politesse
n’avait pas mis le mensonge partout ; enfin on n’y voit point, comme dans
la plupart de nos lettres modernes, des gens qui veulent se tromper, mais des
amis malheureux qui cherchent à se tout dire.”, Romains,
XI ; OC, t. II, p. 174). Such familiarity which
introduces one into the heart of history is what allowed Montesquieu distance
himself appropriately from his enterprise in Romains as
in L’Esprit des lois, and which enabled him to adopt the
“spirit” of Antiquity.